This was an Amazon First Reads selection this month (and the second one in a row I read the month I got it!).

Synopsis:



I should preface this by saying that I started reading this book on the plane to Hawaii for our family vacation, and I finished it one night into the visit. It was exactly what I wanted from a literal summer beach read; a fast-paced mystery/thriller that was mostly enjoyable to read, but still had plenty of nits for me to pick. Spoilers ahead, especially for Tornado Dodger who also picked this book for her July First Reads selection and may want to experience the book for herself.


So the book opens with Andi Hart looking for an office rental space to open her own real estate brokerage. She's the top-selling agent (and the boss' clear favorite) at her current employer, but she wants to strike out on her own for unknown reasons. David and Diana Saint (her current bosses) call her in on her day off to announce to the entire office that they've just been given the contract to an oceanfront Malibu mansion valued at $50 million. Whoever brings in a buyer will get a commission worth a cool $1 million.

That's the hook, and then we're treated to the personal lives of all the real estate agents at Saint, and why they each need the commission. Myles is a rich kid but has a massive gambling problem and needs the money to pay off his debts. Hunter is the jerk of the office and needs the money to pay child support to the interior decorator he accidentally knocked up while he and his wife were going through several unsuccessful rounds of IVF. Krystal is the trophy wife of an ex-NFL star who is sure her husband is sleeping around and wants to set herself up with a nest egg for when he eventually leaves her. Verona is pretty sure she's just been diagnosed with breast cancer and might be dying, so she wants to set her husband and kids up well for when she's gone. And Andi, of course, wants to get out and start her own business away from the Saints. For, again, undisclosed reasons. But during the broker's open to get the house on the market, they find a dead body in the pool and everything goes to hell from there.

Which brings me to my first complaint about this book... so much of this story depends on the reader not knowing basic information, and the author plays it out way longer than necessary (or even plausible within the confines of narrative). The dead body is found within the first 50 pages (a body that not only had a wallet with it, but is also a very wealthy/somewhat famous person), but the identity of the dead body isn't revealed until page 227. What happened in that middle span of 200 or so pages? I'm so glad you asked... it was some of the most tortured, overly-wrought information avoidance I've ever read. The detectives investigating the murder (of again, a known person with ID) constantly say things like, "We haven't had a chance to ID the body yet," and "We know the victim isn't David Saint. We got a provisional ID from the driver's license and are running it down now," and "The media doesn't have the victim's name, which is a blessing because we haven't made the death notification to the next of kin yet" (that last statement was days after the murder).

So not only was the author taking great pains to avoid telling the reader who the victim was, but she did it by contorting and inaccurately portraying police procedure for the sake of drawing it out. And the worst part? The identity of the dead body didn't need to be a secret. The story would have worked just fine if we had known the identity of the victim on page 50, and the only thing that would have been sacrificed is a terrible twist/reveal that could have been better handled anyway (more on that later).


My second complaint with the book. The author also doesn't seem to understand what (or who) she's writing about.

She summarized an agent's job as "... [she] read through the basic info she'd need to learn for any showings - number of bedrooms, baths, dimensions, finishes, and so on" . The author repeatedly only goes into the basics of a real estate agent's job, but never says more than that, making me wonder if her entire knowledge of how real estate works is watching a few episodes of Million Dollar Listing or Selling Sunset.

The whole conceit of Andi leaving to start her own brokerage is treated like this huge betrayal like, "How can she start a direct competitor" as if this is Marvel versus DC or Coca-Cola versus Pepsi... when, in reality, California has more than 90,000 active real estate brokerages, and Los Angeles alone has more than 35,000 active real estate agents .

Krystal ends up discovering that her husband isn't having an affair... he's meeting with a female writer who's secretly helping him write an autobiography. This is exceptionally dumb for three reasons. First, her husband doesn't want anyone to think he's having an affair... and yet he wines and dines this biographer woman regularly at fancy restaurants. Instead of, oh, say, meeting at his hotshot agent's office who has facilitated this whole deal. Second, the reason he's doing the autobiography in secret is because Krystal nixed the idea the first time because she was afraid the book would unearth her poor white trash roots and all the struggles in her marriage. I'm sorry... what? In what world is an ex-NFL player's ghostwritten autobiography the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that turns up sordid history and then publishes it without consent? Has the author of this book ever read a celebrity biography? And third, Krystal is convinced that he's having an affair and going to file for divorce because she, and I quote, "Walked into [her husband's] study without knocking one day, and he'd been reading an official-looking document." That's it. The author makes reference to the "official looking document" multiple times without ever explaining what it is... and yet it's enough to convince Krystal that it's something unsavory.

The cops "[stop] off on the way for a quick takeout lunch at the Jack in the Box on Agoura Road. They ate outside in the lot, using the hood of [the detective's] Mustang as a makeshift table for the food and drinks." Why not just eat inside the f'ing restaurant?

Hunter systematically tries to put his coworkers out of commission so he can get the million dollars, including stealing a coworker's client (a fireable offense at almost any brokerage in the world), and somehow managing to perfectly orchestrate a squash game where Myles breaks his wrist (which for some reason means he can't sell houses?). Andi has her tire slashed one day and she walks around with description like, "A shudder rippled through [her] body. What was that old saying? Someone walking over my grave?" When she misses an important meeting because of it, she starts wondering if the entire office thinks she's now unreliable, or that she's too unprofessional since she missed an important meeting. Your tire was slashed while your car was parked in your driveway and you missed a meeting, honey. Calm down with the PTSD. And... my personal favorite... Andi's neighbor works with computers, and it leads to this *chef's kiss* of an exchange:


In what world would someone, in the year of our Lord 2023, upon hearing someone say "I work with computers" then assume said person is an elite hacker capable of breaking into state agency databases?

The book was filled with this kind of nonsensical stuff that not only felt like the author was padding the word count, but also just didn't understand basic details of the world she was writing about, and/or doesn't understand how real people act.


Which brings us to the third and most egregious issue with this story... the actual story is complete narrative poppycock. You ready for this?

The big twist I mentioned above? The one that was the reason the author stalled on identifying the victim for over two-thirds of the book? The victim is both the developer of the house they're all competing to sell... and Andi's father. The sole purpose of the deferred identification (and all the problems that came with it) was so the author could write this exchange:



That's the whole big reveal. And the thing is, everyone knows who Nolan Chapman is earlier in the book (he's one of the two developers that built the house everyone is trying to sell). We could have known that the victim was Nolan Chapman by, like, page 100, and the reveal that he's also Andi's estranged father would have been a fine reveal here... but the author bent over backwards to conceal both pieces of information for this lazy plot twist toward the end of the book. Fun fact... not even Andi figured this out until this moment, despite knowing the holding company that built the house is called Petronia Properties and the fact that she grew up (and her mom died) on a Petronia Street... and the fact that her dad has a penchant for owning gold-colored classic muscle cars with tinted windows and one had been following her around for days.

Here's the overall plot... Andi's mom died when Andi was a teenager. Everyone assumed it was a suicide (for no explicable reason) but Andi was sure her abusive father, Nolan, was behind it because she learned that her mom was going to leave him and take Andi with her. So Andi ran away from home and to New York, but Nolan follows her there and becomes super wealthy as a real estate developer in the meantime. Andi sees him in New York by happenstance, and runs away again, this time to Los Angeles.

Nolan follows her yet again, takes the opportunity to build his dream home for a billionaire friend of his, contacts Andi's employer and gives them the listing on the condition that they'll make sure Andi's the one that gets the commission, thereby ingratiating himself back into her life. One of the other agents finds out the commission is in the bag for Andi, so they attack Nolan and leave him for dead. But, because there has to be another twist, the actual killer is Marty Stein (Nolan's developer partner, the face of the operation, AND the person Andi's mom was going to leave Nolan to be with) who finds Nolan incapacitated and then pushes him into the pool so he dies exactly like Andi's mom. Incidentally, this is one of the biggest plot holes in the book... if Nolan approached the owners of the Saint brokerage and promised to give them the $50 million home listing if they promised that Andi would be the one to get the commission... WTF are they doing announcing to the entire firm that "whoever sells the house" gets a million bucks? Why not just say they assigned it to Andi? She's their favorite and the best agent they have anyway.

In the end, Andi inherits the holding company (and the $50 million Malibu mansion) as the sole heir to Nolan's rights... and the book ends with her hiring another brokerage in town to represent the sale of the house. All the other agents at Saint are in various states of disorder (one is in prison, one's in rehab, one gives up real estate for her family, etc.), and the book literally ends with no falling action or resolution.

Ultimately, as I mentioned above, this was the perfect beach read... it was quick, it was fun, and it had so many plot holes and little annoyances that I was able to write a... checks notes... 2,500 word review of it.

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Created Mar 14, 2024 at 11:47am • Submit your own review...